Ayn Rand Helped the FBI Identify It’s A Wonderful Life as Communist Propaganda


If you want­ed to know what life was real­ly like in the Cold War Sovi­et Union, you might take the word of an émi­gré Russ­ian writer. You might even take the word of Ayn Rand, as the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (HUAC) did dur­ing the Red Scare, though Rand had not lived in her native coun­try since 1926. Nonethe­less, as you can see above, she tes­ti­fied with con­fi­dence about the dai­ly lives of post-war Sovi­et cit­i­zens. Rand also tes­ti­fied, with equal con­fi­dence, about the nefar­i­ous influ­ence of Com­mu­nist writ­ers and direc­tors in her adopt­ed home of Hol­ly­wood, where she had more recent expe­ri­ence work­ing in the film indus­try.

The 1947 HUAC hear­ings, writes the blog Aphe­lis, led to “the sys­tem­at­ic black­list­ing of Hol­ly­wood artists.” Among the wit­ness­es deemed “friend­ly” to cap­i­tal­ism were Gary Coop­er, Walt Dis­ney, and Ayn Rand. Pri­or to her tes­ti­mo­ny, the FBI had con­sult­ed Rand for an enor­mous, 13,533-page report enti­tled “Com­mu­nist Infil­tra­tion of the Motion Pic­ture Indus­try” (find it online here), which quot­ed from a pam­phlet pub­lished by her group:

The pur­pose of the Com­mu­nists in Hol­ly­wood is not the pro­duc­tion of polit­i­cal movies open­ly advo­cat­ing Com­mu­nism. Their pur­pose is to cor­rupt non-polit­i­cal movies — by intro­duc­ing small, casu­al bits of pro­pa­gan­da into inno­cent sto­ries and to make peo­ple absorb the basic prin­ci­ples of Col­lec­tivism by indi­rec­tion and impli­ca­tion. Few peo­ple would take Com­mu­nism straight, but a con­stant stream of hints, lines, touch­es and sug­ges­tions bat­ter­ing the pub­lic from the screen will act like drops of water that split a rock if con­tin­ued long enough. The rock that they are try­ing to split is Amer­i­can­ism.

Rand and her asso­ciates helped design a “film regime” that dis­sect­ed oth­er post-war movies like William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives and George Cukor’s Keep­er of the Flame. These McCarthy-era film crit­ics sought to root out “ide­o­log­i­cal ter­mites” in the indus­try; they were espe­cial­ly dis­trust­ful of movies that ele­vat­ed what Rand called, with con­tempt, “the lit­tle man.” One of the films iden­ti­fied as par­tic­u­lar­ly per­ni­cious to the “rock” of Amer­i­can­ism was Frank Capra’s clas­sic It’s a Won­der­ful Life, a movie that today seems built on bedrock U.S. nation­al­ist values—commitment to fam­i­ly, redemp­tion through faith, con­tent­ment with mod­est small-town liv­ing….

Lis­ten­ing to Capra’s moti­va­tion for the film—as quot­ed in The Los Ange­les Times—makes it hard to believe he had any­thing like pro­mot­ing a worker’s par­adise in mind: “There are just two things that are impor­tant,” he said, “One is to strength­en the individual’s belief in him­self, and the oth­er, even more impor­tant right now, is to com­bat a mod­ern trend toward athe­ism.”

But in the FBI’s analysis—and pos­si­bly Rand’s, though it’s not clear how much, if any, of the report she authored directly—the tale of George Bai­ley man­i­fest­ed sev­er­al sub­ver­sive ten­den­cies. Fla­vor­wire sums up the charges suc­cinct­ly: “Writ­ten by Com­mu­nist sym­pa­thiz­ers,” “Attempt­ing to insti­gate class war­fare,” and “Demo­niz­ing bankers.”

Wonderful Life FBI File

We live in odd times, such that this rhetoric—which seemed so quaint just a cou­ple short decades or so ago—sounds jar­ring­ly con­tem­po­rary again as the pol­i­tics of the mid-20th cen­tu­ry reap­pear every­where. The charges against the seem­ing­ly innocu­ous Capra film hinged in part on the alleged Com­mu­nist ties of its prin­ci­ple screen­writ­ers, Fran­cis Goodrich and Albert Hack­ett. In their report, part of which you can see above, the FBI wrote that the screen writ­ers “prac­ti­cal­ly lived with known Com­mu­nists and were observed eat­ing lun­cheon dai­ly with such Com­mu­nists as Lester Cole, screen writer, and Earl Robin­son.” Palling around, as it were.

In addi­tion to nam­ing the writ­ers’ acquain­tances and lunch bud­dies, the report quotes a redact­ed indi­vid­ual who “stat­ed that, in his opin­ion, this pic­ture delib­er­ate­ly maligned the upper class.” Anoth­er blacked-out source “stat­ed in sub­stance that the film rep­re­sent­ed a rather obvi­ous attempt to dis­cred­it bankers by cast­ing Lionel Bar­ry­more as a ‘scrooge-type’ so that he would be the most hat­ed man in the pic­ture. This, accord­ing to these sources, is a com­mon trick used by Com­mu­nists.” Final­ly, a third redact­ed source com­pares the plot of Capra’s movie with that of a Russ­ian film called The Let­ter, screened in the U.S. fif­teen years ear­li­er.

We can­not say for cer­tain, but it’s rea­son­able to assume that many of these hid­den FBI sources were asso­ciates of Rand. In any case, Rand—in vogue after the suc­cess of her nov­el The Foun­tain­head—appeared before HUAC and re-iter­at­ed many of the gen­er­al claims made in the report. Dur­ing her tes­ti­mo­ny, she focused on a 1944 film called Song of Rus­sia (you can hear her men­tion it briefly in the short clip at the top). She chiefly cri­tiques the film for its ide­al­ized por­trait of life in the Sovi­et Union, hence her enu­mer­a­tion of the many evils of actu­al life there.

Curi­ous­ly, many crit­i­cal treat­ments of It’s A Won­der­ful Life have said more or less the same thing of that work, call­ing the film “sen­ti­men­tal hog­wash,” for exam­ple, and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of “Amer­i­can cap­i­tal­ist ide­ol­o­gy.” These read­ings seem per­sua­sive to me, but for those like Rand and her fol­low­ers, as well as J. Edgar Hoover and his para­noid under­lings, no film it seems—no mat­ter how cel­e­bra­to­ry of U.S. nation­al­ist mythology—could go far enough in glo­ri­fy­ing hero­ic cap­i­tal­ists, ignor­ing class con­flict, and min­i­miz­ing the strug­gles of “the lit­tle man.”

As Raw Sto­ry notes, tes­ti­mo­ny from oth­ers at the HUAC hear­ings brought “redemp­tion of an odd sort” for Capra’s movie, which “has been more than redeemed as it slow­ly became a sen­ti­men­tal and beloved hol­i­day peren­ni­al.” But even if It’s A Won­der­ful Life may now look like apple pie on cel­lu­loid, Fla­vor­wire points out that it’s still liable to raise sus­pi­cions among cer­tain aggres­sive pun­dits and cul­ture war­riors who push a “war on Christ­mas” nar­ra­tive and see social­ist sub­ver­sion even in acts of char­i­ty, like those dis­played so extrav­a­gant­ly in the film’s mushy end­ing (above).

It’s A Won­der­ful Life “is a hol­i­day movie that doesn’t men­tion Christ­mas until the 99-minute mark…. It takes a most­ly sec­u­lar read­ing of the hol­i­day as a time to take stock of your life, of the true bless­ings of fam­i­ly and friends. To those obsessed with the pre­ferred hol­i­day greet­ing or the col­or of Santa’s skin… this must sound like quite the Com­mu­nist sub­ver­sion indeed.”

Read much more about the HUAC inves­ti­ga­tion of Hol­ly­wood at Aphe­lis, who include links to a redact­ed ver­sion of the FBI “Com­mu­nist Infil­tra­tion” report and many oth­er fas­ci­nat­ing doc­u­ments.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the CIA Secret­ly Fund­ed Abstract Expres­sion­ism Dur­ing the Cold War

When Ayn Rand Col­lect­ed Social Secu­ri­ty & Medicare, After Years of Oppos­ing Ben­e­fit Pro­grams

Free Audio: Ayn Rand’s 1938 Dystopi­an Novel­la Anthem

The CIA’s Style Man­u­al & Writer’s Guide: 185 Pages of Tips for Writ­ing Like a Spy

Bertolt Brecht Tes­ti­fies Before the House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Com­mit­tee (1947)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness


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  • will says:

    this is how the #church delt with peo­ple who­just want­ed 2b #human in usa http://goo.gl/Rkc3Ug whole cha­rade was lat­er exposed as #mon­strous

    just sim­ple want­i­ng human rights and a bet­ter #world for you and your #child for this #crime the church tried to turn every­one into mon­ster for them to slay

    and this is just some of the #mad­ness they tried to push
    this is #reli­gion
    #his­to­ry #human­rights #soci­ety #democ­ra­cy #us #usa

  • Richard says:

    Ayn Rand was a con artist on so many lev­els it’s hard to believe that any­one would take her word for any­thing. She was an ille­gal alien in the US. She was more than eager to take her Social Secu­ri­ty from the gov­ern­ment despite her juve­nile “phi­los­o­phy” in “Atlas Shrugged”. She was a joke.

    How­ev­er, Ayn Rand was an athe­ist and on that I can agree with her, but only on that.

  • Don Kenner says:

    It is def­i­nite­ly a bit of a stretch to con­sid­er “It’s a Won­der­ful Life” com­mie pro­pa­gan­da, though the eco­nom­ic premise of the movie is very sil­ly. Bankers don’t get rich by deny­ing peo­ple loans; they get rich by mak­ing loans to peo­ple who can pay them back. Love the movie, though!

    But Rand was right on tar­get with “Song of Rus­sia.” OMG — the most jaw-drop­ping exam­ple of com­mie agit-prop I’ve ever seen.

    Quib­bles: Rand was not an ille­gal alien, nor did she wor­ry much about those who were (she took it as a giv­en that every­one want­ed to come to the USA). And she did­n’t “take Social Secu­ri­ty from the gov­ern­ment” — rather, she accept­ed the $ she had paid in over the years as her mon­ey. And she encour­aged oth­ers to do so, although she thought a more “moral” sys­tem would be one that was non-coer­cive, i.e., through pri­vate invest­ment.

  • Tom says:

    Pro­pa­gan­da for hap­pi­ness.

    And it’s not a coin­ci­dence bankers are made the vil­lain so often. What was true in Capra’s day is just as true today.

    As a Brit though, I do find McCarthy­ism incred­i­ble, and how the stig­ma and mis­use of the word “com­mie” when peo­ple talk about fair­er dis­tri­b­u­tion of tax­es is bandied about.

    Pol­i­tics needs to be taught in schools in an impar­tial man­ner.

  • Mike Kienzler says:

    13,500 pages? That’s a dead give­away that Rand wrote it.

  • Jim Smith says:

    I haven’t seen any­one bring up the point that Jim­my Stew­art’s lead char­ac­ter is also a “banker.” He oper­ates the sav­ings & loan in the town that gives mort­gages to the town­folk in return for their deposits. He is the “good” banker; instead of using the wealth of the town for prof­i­teer­ing and squeez­ing the wealth out of the res­i­dents as Bar­ry­more’s “bad” banker does, he rep­re­sents rein­vest­ment in the town and the peo­ple. His stir­ring scene where he explains this to the folks who he dis­suades from a run on the sav­ings & loan makes this type of cap­i­tal­ism very clear–a bank invests in the town, just as the peo­ple invest in the bank. I’m not sure why this type of cap­i­tal­ism was odi­ous to Rand, oth­er than it encour­ages a belief in the com­mon good, and Rand appar­ent­ly had no store in the com­mon good. She cre­ates her heroes and their ideals, and then leaves it at that; we should all appre­ci­ate these genius­es and their prof­its from their good work. It does­n’t mat­ter that the ben­e­fits to us seem to be pret­ty ethe­re­al. Rand’s com­merce, art, archi­tec­ture and wealth are pret­ty much goods for their own sake.

  • beergas says:

    Sol­id analy­sis of a decent, human­is­tic film that has a heart. Some peo­ple in that era and mind­set could­n’t deal with some­thing that was a soft val­ue like ‘heart’. Still see that today.
    Being a for­eign­er prob­a­bly did­n’t offer her much to iden­ti­ty with as she came into con­tact with the com­mon folk.
    Today with the media pump­ing ‘the mes­sage’ to every­one these kinds of self-cen­tered cul­tur­al icons have a hard­er time aris­ing . Almost the oppo­site where any and all have their 15 fame.

  • Paul Duca says:

    Irony…when this film fiz­zled at the box office, it result­ed in the demise of Capra’s Lib­er­ty Films–and with the slow decline of his pro­fes­sion­al rep­u­ta­tion in sub­se­quent years, Capra grew bit­ter, unhap­py, and con­ser­v­a­tive.

  • Greg Gauthier says:

    Curi­ous. Zeal­ous anti-com­mu­nist hys­te­ria in the 1940’s and 1950’s pro­pels many of its vic­tims into per­ma­nent pop­u­lar­i­ty after the scare.

    I won­der if the same will hap­pen now, with the zeal­ous anti-fas­cist hys­te­ria over­tak­ing the coun­try…

  • Dunsty says:

    How many pages? Was it writ­ten in real­ly big writ­ing, in cray­on?

  • Jeff says:

    Ya got­ta agree all the Hol­ly­wood movies are against cap­i­tal­ism. So many movie plots are about Big, Bad, Cor­po­ra­tions try­ing to buy out the last neigh­bor­hood gro­cery store or apart­ment build­ing to tear it down and put up a high-rise or park­ing lot. Real­ly, what movie can you name that said Cap­i­tal­ism is good?

  • Larry says:

    Sure. Years from now, Amer­i­can fam­i­lies will gath­er on Christ­mas eve to watch Alex Jones and Sean Han­ni­ty broad­cast their heart­warm­ing Yule­tide mes­sages of love and tol­er­ance.

  • Jon Cloke says:

    Reminds me of the anti-Russ­ian ‘any­one who sup­ports social media is a Russ­ian stooge’ cam­paign being run by the WaPo and the NYT at the moment, actu­al­ly..

    not to men­tion Trumpian spy­ing on jour­nal­ists and remov­ing all men­tions of glob­al cli­mate change, etc.

    Bet you guys thought the HUAC was just a momen­tary aber­ra­tion, a road bump on the way to a kinder, fair­er Cap­i­tal­ism, did­n’t you?

  • Michael Flores says:

    Joe McCarthy was not involved in the hear­ings in any way, shape or form. Sen­a­tors do not chair hear­ings held by the House. Ayn spoke to HUAC in 1947. Joe began his hear­ings in 1952. Ayn Rand crit­i­cized Joe (more on that in a bit) and con­demned him after he accused a Gen­er­al, whose name is still clas­si­fied, over­see­ing Europe after World War 2. William F. Buck­ley con­demned him to after that inci­dent. But I know some­thing they did­n’t know, nor could they have known. And soon, dear read­er, you will too.

    I began my inves­ti­ga­tion of Joe years ago with a ques­tion no one had ever asked. Where did Joe get his list from? That led me to the dis­cov­ery that he had TWO lists of names, one the pub­lic was nev­er told about. Every­one on the sec­ond list was arrest­ed, that was KGB agents in the CIA.
    Any­one who tells you about the era but has no idea there were two lists has no idea what they are talk­ing about.

    In 2001, in a barn out­side Lan­g­ley, Vir­ginia a fam­i­ly was exam­in­ing a barn adja­cent to the house they bought when work­men told them they had found a false wall. Behind the wall were box­es sealed that were marked THE POND and CIA. They called CIA who sent agents out to get the box­es. But no one in CIA had ever heard of The Pond. It turns out, this pri­vate agency was in charge of find­ing reds in gov­ern­ment. they were very effec­tive. Why? because their source was a head of the KGB.

    Still with me? Good. Now, let me ask you a ques­tion. Have you ever won­dered why FDR and Tru­man bombed every rail­road track in Ger­many- except those going to the death camps? Did you ever won­der why they would not help Jews escape from the nazis? Did you ever won­der why we did­n’t bomb the gas cham­bers in the camps? Did you ever ask why, since there was no mil­i­tary near the camps, we did­n’t just bomb the walls of the death camps?

    Because they backed the holo­caust.

    Tru­man was a klans­man, says so in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy. Do you have any idea what that meant in the 1940’s? For one year Japan tried to sur­ren­der. All they asked was that they keep their emper­or. We dropped 2 atom­ic bombs on them and Tru­man then said, you can keep your emper­or. I call that a war crime. Has Trump done any­thing like that?

    Before you read any fur­ther, I sug­gest you drop the mock out­rage and smug­ness.

    The Pond gave Joe the list of KGB agents in the CIA. John Grom­bach, the man in charge of The Pond had giv­en the list to Dulles head of CIA but incom­pe­tent Dulles had done noth­ing about it. Joe told him he was going to ques­tion the FBI, then CIA and then the White House for inac­tion on com­mu­nist spies.

    BOOM!

    But there was some­thing nei­ther Joe nor the Pond knew.

    Tru­man brought in about 200 Ger­man Intel agents who had been in charge of the holo­caust. He gave them fake pass­ports, mon­ey and many jobs. Jobs in CIA. They would be shipped off to West Ger­many to set up Intel there, one of their first actions was to return art that had been tak­en by nazis from Jews then recov­ered by the allies, back to the nazis for cheap. They also cleaned up gov­ern­ment offi­cials records so nazis could become the gov­ern­ment again.

    That would have been an inter­na­tion­al crime and fod­der for Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da for years to come. They could not risk Joe dis­cov­er­ing the true face of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. So James Angle­ton made a fake dossier with fake Pond seals, accus­ing a gen­er­al in charge of Europe after the war od being a red. Right before the Army hear­ings. It worked. Joe was shook up, every­one desert­ed him. CIA asset Edward R. Mur­row attacked him. No one would dis­cov­er Tru­man pro­tect­ed the men in charge of the holo­caust.

    Then the FBI and CIA let Michael Straight of THE NEW REPUBLIC cre­ate all the lies we now know about Joe. Search MICHAEL STRAIGHT Wikipedia. You will dis­cov­er that after he became a KGB asset, he became FDR’s speech­writer. After a stint in the State Depart­ment, he took over the Nation­al Endow­ment of the Arts where he fund­ed art that anti- McCarthy. He fund­ed and helped edit POINT OF ORDER a famous anti-Joe pro­pa­gan­da film. All the lies about Joe, can be traced to him.

    The FBI and CIA by allow­ing the reds to write the his­to­ry let them into out media, our aca­d­e­m­ic world long before they devel­oped oth­er attacks on us: Piz­za­gate, 911 was an inside job, AIDS was cre­at­ed in a mil­i­tary lab, JFK was killed by CIA the list goes on and on. Rus­sia has played many of you for fools. The first crit­ic of Rus­sia killed on for­eign soil was Trot­sky. There have been many more since.

    I got to read the Pond/ CIA files in 2004. They are now online, just search THE POND STUDIES IN INTELLIGENCE. You will find a full con­fes­sion by CIA about the fake dossier, and you will dis­cov­er the sto­ry isn’t real­ly even about Joe. It’s about The Pond. Con­spir­a­cy the­o­ry? Not if its on the CIA web­site grasshop­per.

    There is no rea­son to keep spread­ing Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da on Joe. You are now, depro­grammed.

  • William says:

    “Ran­di­an apol­o­gists have argued that there is no hypocrisy in tak­ing back the mon­ey one once had to give up in tax­a­tion — and up to a point, they have some­thing like an argu­ment. Unfor­tu­nate­ly what lit­tle they have quick­ly falls apart.

    First, if her accept­ing gov­ern­ment assis­tance real­ly was prin­ci­pled and com­plete­ly con­sis­tent with her phi­los­o­phy, why was it appar­ent­ly con­cealed? It should have been well known already as a demon­stra­tion that despite hav­ing mon­ey “stolen” in tax­es, she was still able to get it back in the end. Why apply for the assis­tance under a name that would keep the infor­ma­tion qui­et?

    Even more sig­nif­i­cant is the fact that a per­son suf­fer­ing from lung can­cer will like­ly take far more from the sys­tem than they paid into it. The surgery she under­went alone may have used up all that she paid into it, and that does­n’t include what­ev­er her hus­band took out of the sys­tem. If she had care­ful­ly cal­cu­lat­ed what she had paid in plus inter­est and took only that, no more, then one could argue that she stuck to her prin­ci­ples. We have no evi­dence that this occurred, how­ev­er, and strong rea­sons to think that it did not.”

    https://www.thoughtco.com/ayn-rand-welfare-queen-government-assistance-3975224

  • john shots says:

    Lib­er­als crit­i­cize Ayn Rand for this but are will­ing to believe the non­sense about Trump and the Rus­sians, go fig­ure.

  • Pete says:

    I have nev­er seen Rand refer to “the lit­tle man” with con­tempt, or any­thing close to ir. In addi­tion, it would not be con­sis­tent with her prin­ci­ples or phi­los­o­phy. Her beef was not rich vs poor but productive/moral vs parasite/immoral.

    Where did you get that idea? Could you quote your source?

  • Robert Villegas says:

    This arti­cle is com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da. Rand and Coop­er were right and she was dis­cussing “The Song of Rus­sia” which was pure com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da which por­trayed the Sovi­et Union, which was a sew­er at the time, as a mod­ern indus­tri­al soci­ety with pro­fes­sion­al­ly dressed peo­ple lead­ing nor­mal lives as if they were liv­ing in the USA. It was a clear pro­pa­gan­da film which sought to deceive the Amer­i­can pub­lic about the mass pover­ty of the Sovi­et Union at the time. Although Rand had been away from the Sovi­et Union for some time, she was ful­ly aware of what was going on in the Sovi­et Union dur­ing the hear­ings. Lots of oth­er peo­ple were as well. This arti­cle is an effort to smear Rand and oth­er anti-com­mu­nists who were crit­i­cal of the Hol­ly­wood writ­ers who were, in fact, spew­ing com­mu­nist lies.

  • Michael Isenberg says:

    It’s true that Rand was con­cerned about com­mu­nist ide­ol­o­gy in Hol­ly­wood, which was and con­tin­ues to be a real prob­lem. But there’s noth­ing in this arti­cle where she actu­al­ly express­es an opin­ion of It’s a Won­der­ful Life. It says that the con­clu­sion it was com­mu­nist pro­pa­gan­da was the “the FBI’s analysis—and *pos­si­bly* Rand’s, though it’s not clear how much” [empha­sis mine]. A real jour­nal­is­tic hack job.

    Hav­ing said that, I have no doubt that if she saw that movie, she would have hat­ed it.

  • Eileen Smyth says:

    The Red Scare took place in 1919 & 1920, not dur­ing the Cold War.

  • John Hermann says:

    Many Amer­i­cans do not know the real mean­ing of the word “com­mu­nism”. They have been dumb­ed down and brain­washed by cor­po­rate con­trolled media into equat­ing social wel­fare and essen­tial social ser­vices with com­mu­nism, which is ludi­crous.

  • Mike B says:

    The mushy end­ing was made pos­si­ble by the fact that the big-city banker got exact­ly what he demand­ed. One of the morals of the sto­ry is “pay your debts and all will be joy­ous.” Had the mir­a­cle not occurred for what­ev­er rea­son, Bai­ley would have been hauled off to jail while his wife and chil­dren stood help­less­ly in the back­ground. It’s dif­fi­cult to view life as won­der­ful for very long when you’re sit­ting in a prison cell.

    Ask your­self, who ben­e­fits the most from hav­ing this mes­sage ingrained with­in Amer­i­can cul­ture?

    This is pro­pa­gan­da for sure, but it’s not com­ing from Stal­in­ists. Think more along the lines of Jacob Schiff and Trot­sky.

  • Mike B says:

    1946…isn’t that about the time when the Mor­gen­thau Plan was being car­ried out in full-force? It’s a won­der­ful life, unless you hap­pen to be a Ger­man in one of Eisen­how­er’s shoul­der to shoul­der open-field death camps. Iron­i­cal­ly, it was the Sovi­et prob­lem that put an end to that attempt­ed geno­cide.

    Strange that we don’t have any movies about those events isn’t it?

  • Jim A says:

    How about “Pret­ty Woman”?

  • Dianne McCarthy says:

    Rand was a psy­chopath. Her ele­va­tion of self­ish­ness as a virtue has dam­aged our nation­al psy­che.

  • Dianne McCarthy says:

    She said dis­abled peo­ple were not wor­thy of love. There’s plen­ty of youtube’s on her TV inter­views.

  • Dianne McCarthy says:

    Remem­ber that George Bai­ley’s friend Wain­right was a suc­cess­ful indus­tri­al­ist and a good guy, help­ing out in the end.

  • Mark Taha says:

    Evi­dence that she was an illegal.alien? Her Social.Security and Medicare were get­ting her mon­ey back. She’d lived under Com­mu­nism @

  • Mark Taha says:

    Tru­man did not join the Klan — he decid­ed not to. He was­n’t Pres­i­dent until the death camps had ceased to oper­ate

  • Omar says:

    The only prob­lem with mccarthy­ism is that is stopped

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.